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Law is lax when terror suspects are racists

Published Mar 9, 2005 2:59 PM

Speculation is intense surrounding the murder of the husband and mother of Chicago federal judge Joan Lefkow.

Lefkow herself had earlier been targeted for assassination by Matt Hale and the white supremacist World Church of the Creator after she enforced an appeals court ruling in a trademark case and ordered the group to change its name. She later levied a $200,000 fine and found Hale in contempt of court for defying the court order. Hale has been in prison since April 2004 for soliciting the assassination of Lefkow in retaliation for her ruling.

The U.S. Marshals Service has been charged with protecting federal judges and prosecutors since 1789. If it is determined that the Feb. 28 double murder of Michael Lefkow and Donna Humphrey was carried out as a result of Judge Lefkow's ruling, it would mark the first time that the U.S. Marshals Service failed to protect the family member of a federal judge targeted over a case decision. (Quad City Times, March 1)

The FBI is investigating the incident and has maintained that it is far too early to make assumptions and that a large number of angles must be investigated. This is despite the fact that a number of individuals representing disparate organizations, ranging from the progressive Southern Poverty Law Center to the Zionist Anti-Defama tion League, and including several white supremacists themselves, believe that individuals sympathetic or affiliated to Matt Hale and the World Church of the Creator were willing and capable of carrying out the murders. (Christian Science Monitor, March 3)

Hale's group, which is also anti-Semitic, incorrectly believed that Lefkow and her family were Jewish.

Questions remain on how the killers were able to circumvent the tight government protection and private security system in order to carry out the murders.

If there was government complicity at some level, it certainly would not be the first time in racially motivated killings. United States' intelligence agencies have a history of involvement and concealment when it comes to terrorist attacks perpetrated by white supremacist organizations.

For example, it took decades before anyone from the terrorist Ku Klux Klan was brought to justice for the death of four young girls as a result of the bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. The FBI, which had thoroughly penetrated the Klan, was the main obstacle to bringing the fugitive terrorists who perpetrated this crime to account. (Newsweek, July 21, 1997)

By casting a wide net of suspicion, instead of focusing closer scrutiny on Matt Hale and the white supremacist movement, the FBI could again provide significant opportunity for a racial terrorist organization to escape trial.

Meanwhile, the FBI, as an instrument of the racist state, targets innocent individuals and organizations in other cases.

Case of Cuban Five

The case of the Cuban Five is a prime example of the U.S. intelligence agencies' perverse sense of priorities. In 1998 agents arrested five Cubans who had carefully collected and provided Cuba with evidence of terrorist plots planned by right-wing Cuban exile organizations in Miami. The Cuban government turned over the information to the FBI.

Instead of acting on the evidence to ensure that the terrorist plots were prevented, the five were charged with espionage and convicted after a trial in an area infamous for its bias against Cuba. They were held in solitary confinement for 17 months. Almost seven years later, these five brave Cubans are still incarcerated in U.S. prisons for attempting to prevent real terrorists from attacking innocent civilians in the U.S. and Cuba.

For months the media and the government have been preoccupied with targeting Muslim organizations and charging them with alleged terrorist ties. Often the usual liberal judicial processes have been violated as suspects found themselves detained without charges or the right to counsel. Many are known to have been tortured.

Nicaraguan hero barred from U.S.

And just recently, a Nicaraguan woman beloved in her country for risking her life in the struggle to overthrow the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza was denied a visa by the U.S. State Department on the grounds that she had been involved in "terrorism." Dora Maria Tellez led the brigade that liberated the city of Leon during the Nicara guan Revolution, and later became minister of health. Tellez was recently appointed as the Robert F. Kennedy visiting professor in Latin American studies at Harvard Univer sity, but now cannot enter the U.S. to assume her teaching post. (Guardian [Britain], March 3)

Meanwhile, the real terrorism legacy of Birmingham lives on as right-wing extremists suspiciously slip past government security to carry out the execution of a judge's family members.

And a racist, imperialist foreign policy ensures that the federal government wastes working people's dollars on investigating charitable organizations that provide much-needed social programs in places like occupied Palestine and Lebanon, while real terrorists such as the World Church of the Creator and the KKK are allowed to roam the streets with impunity.